The student winners of the 2016 Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes were announced at a special dinner with the Demetriades - Tsafka – Kokkalis family. Rachel P. Galimidi received the prize in Biotechnology for her work with Professor Pamela Bjorkman aimed to further understand the mechanism of HIV evasion of the humoral immune response. Junle Jiang was the recipient of the prize in Seismo-Engineering, Prediction, and Protection for his work with Nadia Lapusta which used probabilistic inversion tools to understand the deep-ocean trench generated tsunamis that occurred during the subduction-zone earthquakes in Japan and Chile. Yinglu Tang working with Dr. Jeff Snyder received the prize in Environmentally Benign Renewable Energy Sources for her work on thermoelectric skutterudites for mid-temperature applications such as automotive waste heat recovery. The second winner in this category was Changhong Zhao who worked with Professor Steven Low to study the control and optimization of modern electric power systems. The winner of the prize in Nanotechnology was Gustavo Rios whose research involves development of a modular, scalable, nanofabricated neural probe system for dense 3-D electrophysiology to study animal brains. Rio’s graduate advisor was Professor Thanos Siapas. The prize in Entrepreneurship was given to Anton A. Toutov who was advised by Professor Robert Grubbs. His research interests lie in using fundamental chemistry to development radically new, sustainable ways to make everyday chemical products and generate clean energy.

P. P. Vaidyanathan, Professor of Electrical Engineering, is the recipient of the 2016 Northrop Grumman Prize for Excellence in Teaching. The Prize is awarded to an EAS professor who demonstrates, in the broadest sense, unusual ability, creativity, and innovation in undergraduate and graduate classroom or laboratory teaching. A nomination for Professor Vaidynathan read, “he has been an incredibly talented, dedicated, consistent, and responsible teacher throughout his career at Caltech. He is simply a great teacher who not only does a great job of conveying pertinent and important material to the students, but also spends the time to convey the thought process.” One of the students in his course stated, “this is one of the best-taught courses at Caltech. Period. That's especially nice since signals and systems are such important topics. He is a great professor and lecturer. His lectures are extremely well-organized, and you never leave a lecture not understanding the concepts he discussed.”

Electrical Engineering student Lidan Yu, mentored by Professor Michelle Effros, is a recipient of the 2016 Henry Ford II Scholar Award. She enjoys the breadth and depth of the Electrical Engineering program at Caltech. Over the summer she will be working on a behavioral economics project with Professor Colin Camerer supported by the Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). The Henry Ford II Scholar Award is funded under an endowment provided by the Ford Motor Company Fund. The award is made annually to engineering students with the best academic record at the end of the third year of undergraduate study.

The 2015 issue of ENGenious has won a gold award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District VII in the Awards of Excellence category of Annual Magazines. The award is given by the CASE District VII Board of Directors and the Awards of Excellence Committee to "superior magazines published once a year." First published in 2001, ENGenious is a publication for alumni and friends of the Caltech Division of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS). The goal of the publication is to highlight the contributions of the EAS faculty, students, and alumni in research, education, and industry. [ENGenious]

Venkat Chandrasekaran, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and Electrical Engineering, has been named a 2016 Sloan Research Fellow in the field of Mathematics for his research in mathematical optimization. The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded yearly to researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field. [Caltech story]

Venkat Chandrasekaran, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and Electrical Engineering, has won a 2016 Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Award. The objectives of this program are: to foster creative basic research in science and engineering, enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators, and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering. Professor Chandrasekaran received the award for his proposal entitled, “Latent Variable Graphical Modeling for High-Dimensional Data Analysis. [AFOSR Press Release]